How to get rid!?

[Wouternznk]

Hello everyone,

I have a quick question concerning the OSC add-in for Outlook 2010. A customer of ours is currently using the plugin and it works fine. There is however one thing I can't seem to figure out.

Since I don't feel like spending hours trying to fix something that might seem trivial to those who have experience with this software, I thought I'd ask here.

The problem is that within the social connector of the user, there is a stranger! Apparently, a woman not known to the user has appeared in his social connector bar in the bottom of nearly all his e-mails. This woman has nothing to do with any of his work. I have checked to make sure she doesn't receive any of these e-mails, but it is still a bit concerning if not annoying that a complete stranger continuously keeps appearing. The only thing I found out, is that this strange woman's initials are identical to the user's.

Is there no delete/remove/exclude/eject/neglect/get-rid-off function!? Cheers in advance

 

[Diane Poremsky]

what service is providing the picture? the linkage is by email address / alias and that is where you'll need to investigate. It can come from any of the installed providers- linkedin, facebook, live, or mysite, or the contacts or GAL. if you can identify it as an issue with the alias or something else within the gal, i can pass it along to the social connector guys to investigate.

As an FYI, i have a similar problem on mail from support at godaddy - i see a guy's linkedin photo. Best we can figure is that he put support at godaddy as an address at linkedin. Or support at godaddy created the linkedin account to have some fun. <g>

 

[Wouternznk]

Hello Diane,

Thanks for replying.

The service providing the picture is facebook. I've had the customer check his friends list to see if she's there, which would make sense, but she's not! We can find her, but there is no relation between the user and the woman, not even through mutual friends. As mentioned before, the curious thing is that her initials, J.V.B., are the same as those of the user. Another strange thing is that she randomly appears - not in all sent/received messages, but in about 30 to 40% of them. I have not yet found a pattern in this, as you would expect; Imho it would make sense if she was only appearing in those messages with the same recipients...

 

[larry]

Is her picture coming up in place of his or in place of the sender or other recipients on the message? From the sounds of it, her picture comes up when his should but I wanted to double check.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I'm wondering if she has an alias similar to the user's - ie, both use jvbooth - and her domain is similar to his but mistyped when she added it as a second address to her facebook account. (Otherwise, he'd get her notifications.)

One of the most common address mistypes is using com instead of net - does his provider use both com and net (employees get com, users get .net) or is the .com and .net versions owned by different people?

 

[Wouternznk]

Is her picture coming up in place of his or in place of the sender or other recipients on the message? From the sounds of it, her picture comes up when his should but I wanted to double check.

You might be right.

I have attached a screenshot which was made from an e-mail I sent to the guy who is having the problem - I suppose it should be his picture showing there instead of hers (the first picture/contact is me).

He has sent me this like 5 mintues ago, explaining that the woman's picture is (luckily) only visible in his outlook.

The e-mail is in Dutch, not sure if it's relevant but the text showing above the pictures = "Click on a photo to show updated information about the social network." and "Search cannot return results for this view. Click for more info".

 

[Wouternznk]

I'm wondering if she has an alias similar to the user's - ie, both use jvbooth - and her domain is similar to his but mistyped when she added it as a second address to her facebook account. (Otherwise, he'd get her notifications.)

One of the most common address mistypes is using com instead of net - does his provider use both com and net (employees get com, users get .net) or is the .com and .net versions owned by different people?

Not sure, I have no ways of interacting with the picture whatsoever.. I can click what I want but the only thing that comes with the picture is a link to her facebook profile. So really no clue what domain/e-mailaddress is.

He primarily uses a dot NL account, but has various other POP accounts within his outlook, some of which are .com ..

This whole thing is not really that big a deal, I just find it rather annoying that I have absolutely no say in what's showing in the social connector bar.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I'm more curious as to why it does it.... I can understand why support@godaddy shows some other goofy guy - its an address that belongs to someone else. But he should see his own account photo.

Does he have the address the message was sent to configured in Facebook as a second address or is it the one he signed up with? If he's not using it at facebook, he should add it to his account and see if his picture comes up.

 

[Wouternznk]

I'm more curious as to why it does it.... I can understand why support@godaddy shows some other goofy guy - its an address that belongs to someone else. But he should see his own account photo.

Does he have the address the message was sent to configured in Facebook as a second address or is it the one he signed up with? If he's not using it at facebook, he should add it to his account and see if his picture comes up.

Checking this with the customer now, expecting a reply soonish. Thanks for the help.

 

[Wouternznk]

Reply received.

Apparently he is using an e-mailaddress for facebook that starts with janv at xxx.xx. He also tried to change his main e-mailaddress for facebook into a different one, but the situation remained unchanged.

He also confirmed that there are no messages in which they are both listed as contacts, so it's pretty clear that she appears where he should. Makes me wonder why this is not consistent. There are plenty of messages in which his own details are shown and hers aren't.

 

[Wouternznk]

And another step closer to finding the cause:

Just received another e-mail in which he states that when creating a new message, the picture of the strange woman ONLY appears when he inserts a specific e-mailadres of his own in the 'to' bar. So, in this example, he entered four of his own different e-mailaddresses, and she only popped up with one of them. So, we now know which e-mailaddress (of himself) is related to the picture. This is, however, not an e-mailaddress used or associated with facebook! Did the plot just get thinner or thicker?

 

[Wouternznk]

We just tested something else; adding the 'guilty' e-mailaddress as a contact address for facebook and then trying to send an e-mail. No difference.

Summarizing: It is now clear that the notorious picture only appears when sending from or receiving on a specific e-mailaddress, so the relation is clear; now to find out why this relation even exists...

 

[Wouternznk]

Any suggestions? I'm kind of at the end of my wits... Cheers in advance.

 

[larry]

if he adds a picture to his own contact (create one if he doesn't have one), does it show that picture first?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I don't know of any way to disable it for one contact - you'd need to remove the service that is supplying the picture. You could try Larry's suggestion - Outlook should show the contact photo first if photos exist on more than one service.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

One more thing - can you or he send me a message to diane at slipstick - I want to see whose picture I see. If you do it, don't forget to CC him at the same address that shows the woman's picture.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

My contact in Support suggests you might want to open a support case so they can investigate it. They were able to easily repro my godaddy addresses (both sales and support do it now).

 

[Wouternznk]

Thanks guys, I will try the above suggestions and post my findings ASAP.

 

[Wouternznk]

The 'ASAP' wasn't really the appropriate term I suppose. Sorry for the delay.

I'm still waiting for the person to mail me back his results on the last two suggestions, I'm expecting to hear back from him today.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

LOL don't worry about it. It's not life or death and the threads never close.